I”˜ve not updated this for a while but now the works all done here are a few piccies of the job
The rust here was fairly easy to remove with the little grinding disc on the dremmel followed by some anti rust gel and then the whole lot got a couple of coats of black smoothrite and then some underseal
Basically everything on that rear beam was stripped down and boxed up for blasting, the wishbones and rear beam were powder coated in black also.
When back from the powder coaters I popped it all into a garage local where a good bloke there called John changed the wishbone bushes and beam bushes for me.
The original diff was a 4.1 which was just daft with the M30 so I obtained this 3.46 from our man Mick (magpie) and spent ages removing the crusty rust and giving it 2 coats of smoothrite. It’s the diff from that silver 323 breaker by the way.
When fitting the wishbones and beam I bought all new bolts and nuts to the same spec as OEM
All the brake pipes were really rusty so I made up some ones and replaced the rubber flexi pipes with Goodrich pipes
Also the old turn was treated to a new petrol filler rubber hose
I didn’t do anything to the springs as they were in good nick and the shocks were new
The rear ARB bushes, drop links, brackets, nuts and bolts were all replaced
These heat shield hangers were totally crusty, looks like they had no rust proof from the factory at all, they were cheap from the stealers and look nice in gold IMO
Not much fun lying on the cold garage floor !!
Jobs you wish you’d never started ! for me the list is headed up by ”areplacing the CV boots”a what a pig of a job, and that’s just getting hold of replacement ones, I had a nightmare and in the end bought them from BMW but they were bl00dy expensive I thought.
In this photo the output shaft has come out of the diff, it’s surprisingly easy to pull in and out, I think my seal is duff
Shame I don’t seem to have any photos of re-building the handbrake shoes. Must admit though I bought all new springs and the retaining spring clips in the end, painted them gold of course
These callipers were well rusty but a vapour blast bought them up like new, I’ve painted them gold smoothrite and also bought a new seal kit from ebay (biggred)
There must be a million other bits and bobs I had to replace like all the little plastic clips on the beam and wishbones etc etc, anyway I worked through it all spreading the cost over as many months as I could”¦.and eventually is was all back fitted and the list of things to do got smaller
1. tighten up the hub nuts
2. tighten up the drive shaft flange bolts
3. bleed the brakes
4. test drive
so, last few pics, I used the pressure bleeder which worked really well and made a pig of a job quite easy in the end, actually I really enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would !!
pipe and a jam jar each corner, priming the jam jar with half full of brake fluid
Pressure bleeding set up, very easy to use. Must get those front callipers painted gold now !!
When done, I rolled her out for the first time in a few months and it felt quite an occasion !!
I’ve got the temp wheels on at the moment as I picked up these from zone legend B7 recently. They have been re--furbished now along with the caps and finished in powder coated metallic silver
I took the turd out for a quick test drive and the brakes are very firm and work well. The 3.46 makes the car so so so much more drivable now, and i'm well pleased with how it drives.
All in all this summs about 4 months on and off work, I just need to wait a month or 2 to save up for some new rubber, then the cabbie is all ready for the spring

Happy days
